Author
Topic: Slam and Academics (Read 2423 times)

for those that don't know, I'm currently working on my Ph.D in Education, one of my areas of study is a comprehensive look at ways and strategies to meld poetry and K-12 education. As a matter of fact this semester I am teaching a class to pre-service teachers called Reading Writing & Teaching Poetry. THe class is designed to give the next generation of teachers better ammunition to teach poetry to the millennials.

That being said, I know a lot of us are teaching various poetry classes to various constituencies. Some are MFA's teaching grads students, some are teaching undergrads, some are teaching K-12. I thought it may be a good idea to have a space here, where we discuss the different texts we a re using, the different methods we are using, and the different assignments, lesson plans, syllabi, or anything else that we can do as a community to help each other out.

Just talking to different poets on facebook and at WOW I realize there are quite a few of us out there, and I think it could be helpful to us and to our students to share some info. I think it may also be interesting to see how we can collectively push the conversation.

Anyone interested in sharing ... let me know....

-LOGIC

Logged

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music... ― Friedrich Nietzsch

I'm out of town for a wedding right now so I don't have the specific things I use on me at the moment but I like to keep Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences in mind. It's like most theorems when it comes to education, in that it isn't perfect but I personally do think that all kids don't learn the same and when it comes to introducing poetry into the classroom, I try to keep this in mind with the lessons I'd like to introduce.

So like for example:To cater to students who are more active - showing a youtube video of a few poems that are performed and open dialogue about how the body is used as an instrument to communicate. Try to think of what symbols we make when trying to give image to the words we verbalize. From that point, if we're working on writing, write those symbols, gestures and movements down, and then try to incorporate them into what prompt we may be writing.

For musically inclined kids - explore rhythmic poetry and lyrics. I know last year we used rap lyrics in a class I taught at a local high school. I've used Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan before. Show how the tones and ranges our voice creates, both when performed and written can create a sort of music. Don't be limited just to lyrics but to sounds and music, and how they compliment poetry.

These are just a couple of examples off the top of the head. I know I'm pretty young, and some might have more experience than I have but I got my B.A. in Elementary Ed, and spent a lot of my time student teaching merging the arts with lessons, mostly math lessons but lessons within different subject matter. So far in the few years I've been teaching since finishing that degree my methods have been effective for kids I've worked with. It isn't the only way, and isn't the only effective way to teach poetry but my methods and I can in any way help you out with it I'm down.

Something I've seen recently is poets releasing their book with a section specifically for teaching the poems in it. So far the only ones I have seen are Murder Stay Murder by Geoff Kagan Trenchard (Penmanship), and Yarmulkes & Fitted Caps by Aaron Samuels (Write Bloody).

A couple of the texts that I refer to are The Portable Poetry Workshop by Jack Myers and Poetry Handbook, A Dictionary of Terms by Babette Deutsch.

There's a lot of options on poets and work to use all depending on what kinda lessons you wanna do, so it's all dependent on what you're trying to do. I just brought both of these up because they've been helpful for me alongside a lot of other texts.